Her baby is only 4 months old! I cant believe you have already made your mind up about her future parenting and an end to going out together!

She may feel stressed by the mere thought, and feel she wont be able to cope with her baby out in the evening, judged (boy is she right to fear that!) as a new mum with her friends who both have older babies, and she might not find it relaxing and nice at all. Doing the feeding, the nappy changing, with other mums and kids present, along with getting her baby to sleep.

To me, sounds like a pretty helllish evening. Maybe she prefers to put her feet up at home, rather than struggle out of the home?

Yabu. Not all babies are portable. 5 month old ds will turn into a demon after about 7pm. We've never tried to enforce a routine, this is just the end of his day and he is tired. we may be able to get him to sleep in a pushchair or car seat but this would take about 45 mins of rocking and shushing. You wouldn't want us as guests, we'd be distracted and ds would be noisy and miserable.

Routine seems to have become more fashionable. When my daughter was a baby I would take her out with me to friend's houses sometimes in the evening, and if she was tired I'd feed her then put her down somewhere quiet. Often on a rug or blanket on a floor - and she would sleep quite happily.

I can see that for some parents and babies there are advantages in routines. But there are disadvantages too.

the thing is, it's so easy to say that you shouldn't let a baby rule your life, but sleep makes everything else either okay or awful. I hated being out with mine past bedtime, he would not have settled and would have been crying and distressed. It's not about the routine, it's that I wouldn't have enjoyed being out with him.

I tried to get out all the time and never enjoyed it. next time with a baby I will be much quicker to say NO to being out and not worrying about judgy people like you.

The thought of breaking DD's bedtime routine brings me out in a cold sweat! We had such awful nights with her until we got into a routine and she is so difficult when we break it that I will never voluntarily do it for anything non-serious / non-urgent.However, my friend has a baby of the same age as DD and they don't use a routine at all. But that works for them.Basically it's up to the individual

I was very rigid with dcs bedtime....bath at 5.30, bed at 6.30.It meant I had the evening to myself, and they were settled for babysitters.They were pretty good sleepers and I think I was terrified of spoiling that routine. My friends were quite similar, so we met as adults in the evening, rather than having children around.

In my opinion your social life naturally changes when you have a baby, it's part and parcel of it. As a pp has said, the thought of trying to settle DS at someone elses house and worrying that he wouldn't sleep, blah blah and worrying that my friends were judging me would ruin any enjoyment I might have of the evening. We haven't had friends over for dinner since DS was born. However we go out for LOTS of lunches, coffees, playing at other people's houses etc. We've had some friends who've judged us for no longer being able to go to the pub at the drop of a hat, and some friends who've just stopped inviting us to things at all, even though we have doting grandparents on standby! When he's older we'll be more flexible. Whilst he's a baby, our evening social life has been put on the back burner.

My DD is in a great routine - wind down starts at 6pm, in bed by 7pm. Sleeps til 7pm. She's only 5 months too.

I'm sorry but YABU. The reason she sleeps so well is because she is in a great routine. My friend, who drags her poor DS here there and everywhere, meaning that no two days are the same, might have a much better social life - but gets zero sleep because the little boy wakes up all night.

Of course, could be coincidental but thank you, I'm keeping my routine

It would have to be bloody good reason to break her routine - even for a night! The last time we did it, it sent her off track for 3 days. Never again!